Tag Archives: Banyan

As many of you know, I bought a Pomeranian puppy. I have had a Pom for the last fifteen years, but she is getting old and I wanted her to pass on all of the behavior, tricks, and commands, that I have taught her in the past. She welcomed the puppy, to my surprise. Her mother instincts appeared and she is teaching the puppy without my intervention. There are a lot of puppy things, that I had forgotten.

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Zenzi stood at the glass door and barked at the back yard. I walked over behind her and looked for an invader into her space. I saw no problem. Usually, I keep a piece of wood in the track of the sliding door for a little extra protection. It was lying on the tile, and not where it belonged. I placed it back on the tracks, and she walked away. Problem solved.

I have a grove of banana trees behind the shed. Zenzi learned that if she pulls the soft skin loose at the bottom of the plant, she can pull it lose all the way to the top. “What fun!”

My house has ceramic tile floors with Persian rugs scattered throughout. My coffee table is an old steam-trunk with a thick glass top. Normally, the top is cleared, displaying money from all of travels beneath. Now, everything in the living room is covered with puppy toys and things she brings in from the back yard. She is still cutting teeth, so I find sticks, leaves, parts of my aloe plants, and the remains of a tomato stake. Amazing… it’s a small doggie door. I also discovered a pair of my socks outside? Trying to tie your shoes is a game to her. Not good when I am running late for work.

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Yesterday I sat in my living room, watching the TV. From where I sit, I can also see out of the sliding glass door and most of my back yard. There is a doggy door, so they can come and go as they please and the yard is fenced in.

Suddenly, I saw Zenzi run from behind my shed like a scared rabbit. She stopped, stumbled as she looked behind the shed, and continued running toward the house. I assumed that she had met our neighborhood black-snake, or maybe a hawk that sometimes raids the mocking birds.

I jumped up, opened the door, and went toward the streak of a puppy. She went airborne and I caught her above my knees. She buried her face in my shirt and I held her tightly for assurance. I walked slowly toward the shed, carrying Zenzi, not knowing what to expect. When we got behind the shed, she started trembling and barking in her ferocious puppy bark. I didn’t see the threat. I watched her and followed her line of sight.

In the corner of the fence, was a plastic bag. It was open, full of air, and had blown over the fence and slowly drifted across the lawn. With her in my left arm, I reached down and grabbed the bag as she trembled. I crushed it to the size of an orange as we walked back to the house. Now I am her hero for killing the fierce shopping bag.

In the end, she’s a great little puppy, now just barely over two pounds. She has shown me a side of KoKo, my big Pom, that I had never seen before. When I call a command… like come, sometimes… most of the time… she just sits and looks at me. Koko looks up at me like… “You need some help?” I tell her to teach her and she goes to Zenzi, bumps against her, and walks back to me. Zenzi usually follows. I give rewards for the student and the helper.

Erotic romance adventure with a touch of Sci-fi.

We sailed back out to blue water and started the long trip back to the Keys. We sailed nonstop for days while the wind and seas were accommodating. On the third day, the skies stayed cloudy, and the wind speed increased. That evening it started raining… sideways!

The visibility dropped to a couple hundred yards. I was glad I had the chart plotter and radar. We hunted for an island to hide out on for a while. I searched the charts, and we were in the middle of nowhere. We were northwest of Puerto Rico and northeast of the Dominican Republic. From the depth meter reading of fourteen thousand feet, I confirmed we were over the Maimon Basin. We were getting tired, and it was too rough to sleep on night watch changes. The whitecaps were splashing across the deck. The water was cold, and we broke out our heavy weather gear.

I already had the main sail reduced into the mast as we still did seven knots across the big rolling waves. We were considering going back to Puerto Rico when the radio started screaming, “Mayday! Mayday! We are taking on water. Mayday! Mayday!”

I had fun writing Amaretto. I am a sailor and learning to be a writer, so I wrote a lot of the scenes from experience. I however… have never had children! I have helped raise other people’s children, but do not have biological children.

As various people reviewed my writing from time to time, it became obvious that I knew nothing about child-birth. In chapter 15, I had Jonah lying on the bed in the sailboat, his hand on Lisa’s tummy, feeling his son moving against his hand. I wrote a lot of emotion into that scene only to be told that at that stage of pregnancy, the child is still not developed. This caused a major re-write in this and several other places in the timeline.

The scene with the M&M’s at momma Saborio’s house, actually happened with my nephew in Ohio. I have taken him sailing in the Caribbean, and he is now a bartender in Chicago. I guess the warm weather thing hasn’t kicked in yet?

The idea of marketing clothing in the US came from a similar story my sister told me, about a man from California that has all of his hi-end leather products made in the Dominican Republic, and sold in the United States. In this book, Lisa’s #fashion insights lead to franchise empire in the United States.

Since I approved the release of this book, I have wrote several more books that you… may… eventually see. I am learning as I go, and as I look back at each book that is published, I wish I had a time machine to go back and change several things. I was advised by a more successful writer… “Just throw it out there and keep writing!” That’s what I am doing, and after about three more books, there is one called “The Wa-Bak Machine” all about a time machine, about the size of a smart-phone.

Please go to ADBanyan.comwhere you can read more about Amaretto with Coffee before you click on the link to Amazon. The Glow, will hopefully be in print before Christmas. It’s very… adult, but for those of you with no restrictions, it’s a definite must have.